Research operations, such as surveying, drilling, testing, and computational simulations, are typically performed to help locate and extract valuable hydrocarbon resources. The information developed during such research operations may be used to assess geological formations, and to locate the desired subterranean assets.
Fault identification and interpretation is one of the major challenges in seismic interpretation. Several existing methods have been developed to detect seismic faults, including those methods disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 7,630,865 issued to Berkovitch et al. U.S. Pat. No. 7,330,791 issued to Kim et al., U.S. Pat. No. 7,069,149 issued to Goff et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 6,735,526 issued to Meldahl et al. In contrast with seismic horizons interpretation, however, conventional techniques for identification and interpretation of seismic faults typically suffer from a lack of accurate and robust automatic solutions. Thus, although desirable results have been achieved using conventional techniques, there is room for substantial improvement.